


Devil's Snare

by Kierkegarden



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Guilt, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Exploration, Kink Negotiation, M/M, No Sex, Post-Gellert, Safe Sane and Consensual, Sexual Roleplay, Upsetting themes, former-student/professor relationship, minor references to nonconsensual touching, references to sadomasochism, wizarding worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 21:45:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17231747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kierkegarden/pseuds/Kierkegarden
Summary: On New Year's day, Albus Dumbledore decides to visit a man who goes by the alias of Devil's Snare.





	Devil's Snare

**Author's Note:**

> Belated Christmas gift for [Zampano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zampano/pseuds/Zampano). Michaelis is our shared OC and I love him to pieces. This is probably nothing like any of my other fics. Please enjoy the experiment and self indulgence!

Knockturn Alley wasn’t a pleasant place to be at night, Michaelis knew, but there were many unpleasantries with which he’d learned to grow accustomed. There was a certain formula in Wizarding London, a chemical balance of mediocrity, complacency and contentment that Michaelis had never had in his blood. He had never resented lacking what it took, but the typical life of a British wizard wasn’t for him.

For starters, he wasn’t content with a Ministry job -- the mundanity of office work was far more unpleasant than whatever filth he came in contact with out here in the field.  And another: Michaelis was, simply put, more comfortable in the company of other men. The wizarding world edged uncomfortably around the topic, probably centuries beyond the muggle one, which wouldn’t yet speak of it. The thing that Michaelis knew but wouldn’t dare utter -- for fear of being lumped in with Grindelwald and his brand of Fanatic -- was that with the expansion of the muggle world, came the further alienation of the wizarding one. And with its alienation, wizards who were already on the fringes would be pushed even farther into the margins. Michaelis knew that day was coming, the day when it would no longer be legal to operate this kind of business, even in the most unpleasant of places. He figured that he would try and squeeze as many galleons out of it as he could before the well ran dry.

That was why the sign on his business’s door was alit by magic even though the date on the calendar read “January First” and the rest of Knockturn rested dark and closed. Outside, a layer of snow had fallen softly on the ground and the leaves on the trees rustled eerily in the wind. Michaelis was in his study when he heard the knock on the door, just barely, over their whispering.

He had put his quill down from his book-keeping and quickly let his worn pajama shirt drop from his shoulders. It was better he greet his guests in a tempting manner. Taking a quick glance in his full length mirror, Michaelis practiced his most sultry pout. Skin tight leather pants gave way to buttermilk skin with a smattering of freckles across his chest. His straight blond hair fell gently to his shoulders. He was just old enough to command authority, but young enough to do it softly. Grabbing a riding crop from his decorative urn of toys, Michaelis smiled. They didn’t call him Devil’s Snare for nothing.

As he opened the door with a flourish, Michaelis surveyed the man before him. He was tall, with noticeably heeled buckled boots and a black cloak draped over his face. Michaelis wondered if he was famous or simply trying to keep warm. Many of his clients were well known faces, Ministry Officials and Quidditch players. The sad reality was that the wizarding world’s formula for success didn’t play well with many other men, wizards who had wives and children who loved them. Michaelis had simply quit the game entirely, the moral burden alone would kill him quicker than his profession. At least here, for the time being, he could freely be himself in the grime of Knockturn. Nobody batted an eye.

Michaelis ushered the visitor inside, standing a bit straighter.

“Hello stranger,” he said, trying to gage what this man might have in store for him, “I see you’ve found yourself entrapped in Devil’s Snare this evening. What might he be able to do for you?”

The man unwrapped his cloak, revealing his lengthy auburn beard first, then his mouth, a long crooked nose, and piercing blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles. Michaelis stared on, mouth agape, trying to figure out how to react to this unlikely familiar face in his office.

“Pr -- Professor Dumbledore?”

“Mr. Northcott,” Dumbledore’s smile didn’t reach his eyes, “This is a surprise.”

That was a mild way to put it. Michaelis had had Professor Dumbledore first for Defense Against the Dark Arts and then Transfiguration throughout his Hogwarts days. Dumbledore had always been so patient with him -- he had listened to Michaelis’s worries about Ministry jobs and encouraged him to look into academia as an option. “I see much of myself in you,” he had told him. Now, Michaelis wondered if it had been a different side of himself that Dumbledore had seen in that rebellious schoolboy. Or perhaps he had just lost his way in Knockturn Alley, as one was want to do.

“What can I do for you tonight, Professor?”

Dumbledore looked from the riding crop to Michaelis’s face. Michaelis could see him visibly shiver. Probably not just lost, he decided.

“Please,” he said, “Call me Albus. I understand if you don’t want to have me, if it’s too strange for you.”

“No,” Michaelis gestured for Albus to take a seat in his study, “Trust me, I always tell my clients that if they are feeling embarrassed, they would benefit to know the long list of others who have been in to see me. It’s confidential, of course, but the point still stands. Everybody could use comfort. Everyone wants to submit once in awhile, and let someone else take the reigns.”

He didn’t mention that he would have never in a million years predicted this from his old transfiguration professor, the man who seemed to live and breathe self-possession. Michaelis couldn’t actually picture Professor Dumbledore -- Albus -- having sex but the images he _could_ conjure up sent warm prickles to his stomach as he imagined it. Of course, he had taken stranger wizards. He had always taken stranger.

“I’m rather new at this,” Albus confessed, rousing Michaelis from his thoughts, “Would you be so kind as to steer me in the right direction?”

“Well,” Michaelis started, “How about we start here. What sort of thing do you have in mind for the evening?”

“It’s…” Albus looked away, “Michaelis, you can’t judge me for it, I’ve become rather desperate.”

Michaelis felt the warmth in his stomach grow, snaking down as he simmered with curiosity.

“Please don’t worry about that,” he purred, “Whatever you have in mind, you must remember, I have seen it all.”

“I just…” Albus started again, curling a strand of hair around his finger, “Can you roleplay, Michaelis?”

Michaelis leaned back. Tame. Boring. There had to be more. “Of course,” he smiled, “I have been an Auror, a Professor, and on one occasion, the giant squid that has made its home in the Black Lake at your school. Who -- or what -- exactly, would you like me to become?”

Albus breathed out, audibly. “How much do you know about the Dark Wizard Grindelwald?”

Now, this was a bit more like it. A foreign enemy, one of the Ministry’s Most Wanted. Michaelis held down a smirk. He could play with that. Grindelwald, when he had heard him speak over the radio, his English was tinged just barely with a German accent. Or perhaps Scandinavian. His images in the Prophet were always moving, pacing, his hands running through his hair. His smile was wild and sinister. Michaelis saw why Professor Dumbledore was interested in him.

Getting to his feet, Michaelis began to pace the room, copying what he remembered of Grindelwald’s body language from the papers.

“I know enough about him to become him for the night,” he spoke with his hands.

Merlin, Michaelis thought, his accent could use work. He was, first and foremost, an actor and couldn’t afford to fail. Albus’s reaction, however, seemed to declare otherwise. His mouth had dropped open slightly, lips ajar and his eyes were lidded.

“Yes,” he breathed, “I think that will work perfectly.”

Not breaking character, Michaelis threw Albus his most manic smile and watched in satisfaction as he shuttered.

“Now,” he said, “We need to discuss your limits.”

 

The Ironbelly Club was only a few blocks from Michaelis’s office. He preferred to write up contracts in a quiet, discreet location. The actual club was loud, filthy, and overwhelming, especially to his new customers. Since Michaelis specialized in ensnaring newcomers to the scene, he didn’t want them to be put off by the more extreme kinks that some wizards enjoyed.

The actual building was vast and dark. A large dance floor took up most of the ground floor. It was lantern lit, with enchanted purple flames, casting strange shadows across the undulating bodies that occupied it. There was a bar, of course, where various leather clad witches and wizards were sipping on brews enchanted to heighten the senses.

Michaelis led Albus past all of it hurriedly, as his former professor stared on in some mixture of fascination and horror. He watched Albus wince as a large wizard -- likely a half-giant -- smacked his ass as he passed by.

Michaelis wielded his riding crop like weapon. “Get your hands off of my customer,” he seethed through his teeth, “He’s not here for you.”

The half-giant’s eyes widened as he shrugged apologetically and turned to walk away. Michaelis smiled to himself. He was a professional, after all.

“Don’t mind him,” he whispered to Albus in a heavy German accent, “You’re all mine.”

Albus made a noise like a puncture as all signs of discomfort melted from his face.

They headed down the back corridor, down the steep steps into the dungeon. The hall was lined with playrooms labelled A through F. From the hallway, Michaelis could feel the floor thumping from one of the occupied rooms. Albus looked completely out of his element there, in his hooded cloak, seeming to contemplate whether this was ever a good idea at all.

“You remember our contract, yes?”

Albus nodded, as Michaelis tucked a strand of auburn back into the hood.

“And our safeword?”  
  
“Phoenix,” Albus said, smiling gingerly, as Michaelis opened the door to Playroom B.

“Good.”

He walked in, and Albus followed. Inside the safety of the contained room, Albus seemed to relax. He let the cloak drop to the floor around his feet, looking around. Much like in Michaelis’s office, there was an array of toys set out before him. The larger ones, rods and whips of various shapes and sizes were placed upright in a cylindrical display and the smaller ones, floggers, feathers, and even what appeared to be a normal oak wand, were laid across a table. In the center of the room was a raised bed with a soft velvet cover and directly behind it was a row of hooks with different costumes.

“You can try something on if you’d like,” Michaelis watched Albus’s lip twitch as he looked upon the Hogwarts robes, Azkaban garb, and leather jumpsuits, “Or I can wear one. Whatever you’d like.”

Shaking his head, Albus looked back him. “You know,” he said, “If I could just make one minor, impermanent adjustment to your hair.”

“Of course.”

Albus reached into his robe pocket for his wand, moving closer to Michaelis. “ _Capillos Crispos,_ ” he whispered, pointing it towards him. A dull flash of white spun out of his wand tip and Michaelis flinched, feeling a slight tingling heat across his scalp.  
  
“Oh,” he said, reaching up to touch his new curls. He walked over to the mirror which hung from the back of the closed door to admire how they sat in perfect corkscrews across his scalp. Even he couldn’t deny that he looked a perfect likeness to a younger version of Grindelwald.

“Transfiguration,” Albus explained, his voice suddenly, achingly low, “Quite a simple one, really, perks of being a spellcrafter in my spare time. You know, you always were interested in spellcrafting, Gellert, although, if I recall, you preferred the ancient Germanic roots.”

Michaelis jolted to attention, as Albus called him by Grindelwald’s first name. That was his cue, as they had agreed in the contract. He forced himself into character, pulling his mouth into a self-satisfied smirk.

“You speak to me as though I am your equal,” Michaelis whispered, closing the gap between them, “but I have won the war, Albus, and you, having chosen the coward’s path, are my inferior.”

He could see a flame of anger flash behind his former professor’s eyes - just for a moment - before they reverted to their usual calm, unreadable state.

“What do you want with me, Gellert?” Albus asked, “Why don’t you just kill me if you have it?”

Have what? Michaelis wondered, not letting it break his composure. Albus was talking to him as though they had a history, a shared understanding of something he couldn’t possibly know. Perhaps these hidden meanings were just a part of the roleplay, perhaps he wanted to imply that he had had some hand in Grindelwald’s terror. Michaelis shivered. The psyches of guilty masochists had always fascinated him.

“Why would I kill you when I have you right here, right now?” Michaelis bore his eyes into Albus’s, pushing him backward onto the mattress with his fingertips. Albus fell almost too easily, hollowly, onto the bed. “I’ve wanted this for so many years, Albus.”

Albus gave in, completely enveloped, the desired response and then some. He looked winded, flushing deeply, as tears filled the corners of his eyes. Apparently, Michealis thought, he had hit a nerve with the shared history idea. Good. Michaelis aimed to please.

“I’m going to take you right here and now,” he said, “and after that, I’m going to keep you in a cage and use you only when I need you. It’s the most use you’ll ever be in this new world I’ve created, so rest assured you still have your purposes.”

“Gellert,” Albus’s breath was heavy against Michaelis’s cheek as he bent over him. His knees dug into Albus’s rib cage, straddling him on the bed. He tilted Albus’s head up to plant a rough kiss against his lips. There was no desire there, just as Albus had requested, only his force against Albus’s willing body. Michaelis flicked his tongue between Albus’s lips, only then realizing that he had wanted this since he was a schoolboy, without the costume or foreign names. Both men shuddered together as Michaelis came up for air, placing his hands lightly around Albus’s throat.

“It’s my fault,” Albus whispered, “I will never be redeemed. I want to feel pain, Gellert, please give me your worst.”

“Yes,” Michaelis hissed, grabbing his favorite flogger from the table, “I’ll make you scream. Your pain will be my symphony.”

Just like that, the haze lifted from Albus’s eyes and he propped himself up on his arms. Michaelis frowned. He had thought the line to be very well constructed, perfectly playing off of Albus’s last. It was well improvised, even, and sounded totally real to Michaelis’s ears. You could never tell with these new submissives, one moment they were begging to be punished, and the next you had gone too far.

“Phoenix,” Albus said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Michaelis pushed himself up and sat beside Albus on the edge of the mattress.

“I’m sorry,” he said, running his fingers through Albus’s hair, “You’re okay, you’re safe, everything’s going to be alright.”

“It’s not that, it’s just…” Albus trailed off, looking lost, “Gellert never enjoyed hurting me. At least, he never seemed to. You were quite good, I promise, for someone who’s only ever seen him from a distance.”

“Oh,” Michaelis eyes widened in concern, “Did you know him before he was…?”

“No,” said Albus quickly, and then pushed himself up to a sitting position, “Well, yes. I suppose. It doesn’t really matter now.”

Michaelis pulled the velvet blanket from under them and wrapped it around Albus’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” said Albus again, to no one in particular, and although the scene had come to an early close, “I’m so sorry. I’ve had many ill-fated ideas and this has to fall somewhere towards the top of that list.”

 

Michaelis couldn’t get Albus out of his mind. Not while he was working, not while he was sleeping. It was like that strange encounter -- one of the strangest, he had decided, that he had experienced in his long career -- was fated to happen. His former professor was clearly deeply troubled by something, haunted even.

Michaelis could feel his own nature, the kindness that had once sorted him into Hufflepuff, demanding that he help Albus somehow. It was funny, he thought to himself one morning, while drinking his breakfast tea, he had thought his goodness had been hardened out of him by his line of work. Apparently, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

He returned to his bookkeeping on the Eighth, a week after their encounter and crossed Albus’s name of his list of receipts. He hadn’t charged Albus for their time together, even though Albus had insisted. Michaelis couldn’t bear to see Albus lose money for a miserable evening, when it was miserable in all the wrong ways.

Setting his quill down crossways over his inkwell, Michaelis rubbed his eyes. The feeling wasn’t entirely curiosity, or even kindness. There was something too about Albus that made Michaelis want to see him again, to get to know him better, as adults on equal footing. Albus had chosen him, to show a sliver of himself to, a sliver that Michaelis figured was deeply shrouded.

Picking up his quill again, Michaelis reached for a new piece of parchment.

 _Dear Albus,_ he wrote in careful print.

 

***

 

Albus always flinched when he received owls. Typically, they were inane, updates from the Ministry or concerned notices from the parents of his students. The three times when the letters had come addressed simply to “A. Dumbledore” in familiar script, anonymous and with no return address, Albus’s heart had nearly beat out of his chest.

Albus feared their contents so deeply that when he had been forced to teach Defense Against The Dark Arts, his bogart had been an owl. They sat unopened in a locked drawer in his desk, like dark talismans, simply waiting.

On the morning of January Ninth, Albus opened his window to an owl and flinched for a different reason. The handwriting on the letter was unfamiliar but the sender was not. Ever since New Year’s day, Albus had been trying to shake the embarrassment of his ill-begotten tryst with Michaelis Northcott, and although he was an expert at deflection, there was nothing he could do about this letter. He tore the paper with weak fingers and read.  
  
_Dear Albus,_

_I’m sorry that I failed to dominate you as Gellert Grindelwald.  Perhaps, instead, I could have lunch with you as Michaelis Northcott? Let me know if I should obliviate myself._

_Sincerely,_

_Devil’s Snare_

He reread the short note, and reread it again, running his finger along the words as he went. Folding the letter back into its envelope, Albus turned the key in his desk drawer. He placed it carefully beside the others, and somehow felt the weight in his heart lift, if only for an instant. For the first time in too long of a time, Albus smiled as he picked up his quill.

  



End file.
